Maximum percolation time in two-dimensional bootstrap percolation

Abstract

We consider a classic model known as bootstrap percolation on the $n \times n$ square grid. To each vertex of the grid we assign an initial state, infected or healthy, and then in consecutive rounds we infect every healthy vertex that has at least $2$ already infected neighbours. We say that percolation occurs if the whole grid is eventually infected. In this paper, contributing to a recent series of extremal results in this field, we prove that the maximum time a bootstrap percolation process can take to eventually infect the entire vertex set of the grid is $13n^2/18+O(n)$.